World Cup-winning former Springbok hooker Schalk Brits winner tells GRANT SHUB about recently beating the pro to the pin, chasing that elusive hole-in-one and golf at the Olympics.
Schalk Brits, who holds the distinction of being the oldest Springbok to win the Rugby World Cup, has been honing his craft during a year-long sabbatical.
Brits has managed to become a scratch golfer from a 5-handicap. And such are his talents on the greens that he saw off the pro in a closest-to-the-pin competition at the Dimension Data Pro-Am in February while his partner Kyle Barker, who turned professional in 2017, watched on.
‘With a great partner like Kyle I could just go pin-up all day,’ Brits told Compleat Golfer from Fancourt where he was playing a round with his sons. ‘I had a good strike, it took a kind bounce and I got closer to the pin than the pro which was fantastic because we also won an MSC cruise,’ says Brits, who exudes enough energy to curb loadshedding.
He may have been nicknamed the Peter Pan of rugby for his longevity but he only took up the game of golf at the age of 13, which he believes was too late. Brits, who put his MBA at Cambridge University on hold to pursue his dream of winning the 2019 World Cup in Japan, is an advocate of the 10,000-hour rule which was popularised by Malcolm Gladwell and says that golf is a very precise sport with many variables at play.
After its reintroduction to the summer Olympics, golf will reprise its role at the Paris Games in August. Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Erik van Rooyen are primed to lead Team South Africa’s male charge, while Ashleigh Buhai and Paula Reto are set to headline the women’s bill when the event tees off at Golf National. Prior to Rio 2016, golf had only featured on two occasions at the Olympics, as far back as 1900 and 1904.
Brits, who has been appointed at Investec and is a Laureus ambassador, is hugely patriotic. He says he’ll be shouting, ‘Go SA!’ when the first ball is hit in earnest but concurs with the notion that Olympic golf is fighting for popularity owing to a packed calendar and a ‘civil war’ playing out between the PGA and the LIV Tour.
‘In terms of Olympic golf gaining traction, that is tricky,’ says Brits. ‘From a rugby perspective, we continue to push for a global season and how we manage player welfare and I think it’s the same with golf. We all know the game’s in turmoil at the moment. Most of the reasons for moving to LIV is for the money but many golfers who have defected want to better manage their calendar. I have spoken to some of the LIV golfers and they have more time at home coupled with a larger pay cheque.’
Brits can relate to wanting to spend more time at your domestic base as he only slept 15 days at home in eight months during the 2019 World Cup year. Brits filled the time when not training and playing rugby by hitting golf courses on tour. He says Fourie du Preez was the most talented golfer of the previous generation and that accolade has now been bestowed upon current flank-cum-lock Franco Mostert in the green and gold.
While Brits has played at the Old Course in St Andrews, sipped from the Claret Jug when Louis Oosthuizen won the 2010 Open Championship and walked inside the ropes with Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Hideki Matsuyama at the Zozo Championship, a hole-in-one continues to elude him. Brits, who played a round with former Saracens teammate Kelly Brown, takes up one of the most amusing tales from his time on the golf course.
‘We were on the 17th playing in the Co-op Classic at Celtic Manor in 2016 and I could hear Kelly shouting with joy when he found the hole at the 2nd. On that specific day, the lanky Scotsman got a hole-in-one and in the process won a Land Rover [worth R835 779 at the time] because the 2nd hole was insured by Worldwide Hole in One.
‘I was disappointed it wasn’t me because I’ve come within a few centimetres of a hole-in-one a couple of times. I couldn’t hide my shock and said to him at the time, “You hardly ever play golf, are a 24-handicapper and yet still hole one. How does that work?”’
Brits is still dumbfounded today by Brown’s stroke of good fortune but, with a shrug of the shoulders, says, ‘That’s golf for you.’ He stresses the game is a lot like life in the sense that you never know what you’re going to get. He says the attitude to golf and life is similar and it’s about managing expectations. Brits’ father, Chris, always told him: You can tell a lot by playing a round of golf with someone and what type of person they are.
‘I’m ultra-competitive and sometimes to the detriment of my golf. In rugby you can get aggressive and smash someone but in golf you have to stay calm and calculated. As soon as you lose your head, the scorecard adds a lot of numbers that you don’t want.’
Brits had a largely unblemished record on the rugby field but the red mist first appeared when he played for the Barbarians in a match against the British & Irish Lions in 2013. He was hit with a three-week suspension after striking ex-Saracens teammate Owen Farrell but they have long since buried the hatchet, which speaks to the spirit of rugby.
When Brits hung up his boots for Saracens six years ago, he was widely acclaimed as the greatest import in English Premiership history. The hooker played 216 matches for the north London-based club and won four Premiership and two European Cup titles.
‘I can’t take any credit for that because it was my teammates who made me look good,’ the 42-year-old says modestly. ‘For me, it was never about being recognised and it was all about earning respect from both my Saracens teammates and peers while I played.’
Brits says that he found himself in the right culture and felt like he could be himself at Saracens, whereas in South Africa he was more boxed in and not as appreciated. There is a pervading sense that Brits was more revered in England than in South Africa.
Brits played 15 Tests for the Springboks, of which he only started four times, and even though he had a win ratio of 86% and signed off by winning the World Cup in 2019, he is of the view that his international career didn’t live up to his own high expectations.
‘It was a massive honour to wear the Springbok shirt,’ says Brits, who debuted against Italy in 2008 after replacing Bismarck du Plessis in the second stanza, ‘but putting it on wasn’t what I thought it would be and, aside from 2019, my Springbok career was actually pretty average. In your own eyes you can be the best player but to the coach you may only be third or fourth choice. That is where I found the joy in going to Saracens. It wasn’t about selection but becoming the best player I could be and making memories.’
– This article first appeared in the May 2024 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.
Photo: Johan Rynners/Gallo Images
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